


crossroads (where we meet, we will part)

by cvptainmarvel



Category: Captain America (Comics), Captain America (Movies), Marvel (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, F/F, F/M, M/M, PTSD, Stucky - Freeform, Swearing, idk guys, its gonna be an intense one
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-27
Updated: 2015-07-22
Packaged: 2018-04-06 13:09:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4222890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cvptainmarvel/pseuds/cvptainmarvel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the events at the Triskelion, good friends parted their ways only to be brought together again by fate.  This time, new friends join in and old friends depart.  When they leave the crossroads, new bonds will have been forged.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. scattered thoughts

Barnes felt like shit.  Literal, actual, shit.  He could practically feel the shittiness radiating off of him.  He was a piece of shit.  What kind of monster could do something so bad to his best friend? At least that's what they were saying on the news.  That's what he saw on the big screens of Times Square the few times he left the abandoned building he was currently residing in a few blocks away.  A week after the incident at the Triskelion, everyone found out that the Winter Soldier had been America's sweetheart Steve Rogers' best friend.  All of Hydra hadn't been dismantled yet, but for some reason, Barnes had decided that Hydra just wasn't his jam.  Maybe it was that goddamn "end of the line" comment that the target said.  The words played over and over and _over_  again in his head, renewing the dull pain of his migraine.

Barnes.  That's all he could remember about himself.  The target had called him Bucky, on the bridge, when they were fighting in the carrier, he murmured it in an unconscious daze when Barnes dropped him on the shore of the Potomac.  But it didn't feel right.  But Barnes, he remembered... vaguely.  Back when they were first figuring out what to do with the soldier, the scientists had accidentally gotten into the habit of calling him  Barnes while checking on him until they were caught buy the shrimpy bald guy. _I'll feed you to the head!_ , he had threatened them, and though he seemed small, Barnes recalled, the men in lab coats had widened their eyes and kept their mouths shut the rest of the time they were in his presence.

Barnes went back to thinking about the shittiness.  In a calculated manner that he had obviously been trained in, he carefully took stock of all his body parts, making sure nothing was missing or too fucked up.  Barnes wasn't sure when or where he had picked up swearing. He was woken up one day and sent on a mission, a string of curses running through his head every time bullets from the target's gun pierced Barnes' skin.  He hadn't mentioned this to the people working on him.  Barnes coolly observed that his two broken ribs were healing nicely and the cuts on his face were already gone.  But his arm.  The other one.  He didn't feel pain, but it was a dead weight.  A ton of metal hanging off his left side: it sucked.  Barnes had gotten far too used to being able to maneuver the monstrosity with -- .  Not a monstrosity.  A prosthetic limb.  Arms are good.  Useful for moving and holding items, helping people.  Just another thing he had to relearn thanks to those assholes.

\-- ease.  With ease.  Barnes' train of thought tended to wander these days from one topic to a related one to another, until there was no discernible link between what he started with and where his mind took him.  But the arm.  It was heavy.  Something was wrong with it and for now, Barnes was stuck lugging it around wherever he went.  But he rarely went anywhere. Once Barnes got to New York, he had stopped, literally.  Barnes wasn't really sure how he'd managed to get all the way to Manhattan.  He sort of just started walking north until he saw a sign that read "NEW YORK CITY" in bright colors that hurt his eyes.  There was a nagging feeling in his stomach that he had been here before.  Something about the city reminded him of the last target.  They people on the television said Captain America and his "best friend" lived in Brooklyn, which as far as he could figure, was somewhere near.  Hydra never let him remember stuff like location.  That would make escaping all too easy.  He was informed about the schematics related to the mission only and then he was wiped.

He still wasn't sure about the best friend part.  Barnes wasn't even sure he knew the definition.  He felt like someone so close to him should be easy to remember.  So how was it that he recalled his old missions, ones that they had made sure to erase from his brain, faster than he recalled his _best fucking friend_.  There was the swearing again.  Barnes tried.  He really did try to remember, but it more often than not led to white hot migraines or blacking out and waking up hours later, feeling like shit.  And his thoughts came full circle.

Barnes became painfully aware of an empty feeling in his gut.  He hadn't eaten in a while, he deduced.  In fact, his last meal was... Barnes couldn't quite recall when the last time he received nutrition was.  It had to have been when Hydra still had him, but beyond that, he didn't know.  Barnes lay on the dirty concrete floor of the abandoned building.  Food, nutrition, energy, powers muscles, stops this goddamn feeling in his abdomen.  Food, Barnes thought, before the pain and hunger made him black out again.  Of course, he wasn't sure if it really was hunger.  Barnes couldn't remember what hunger felt like.  Or aching loneliness. Right now, he names the feeling shitty, not knowing another word for it.


	2. for both our sakes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam and Steve are distracted by dead best friends.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok so this is a sam/steve chapter and i promise it will start making sense after a couple more chapters. also this chapter is dedicated to @clinthefarmer bc its almost her bday (ily)

Steve woke up with tears in his eyes and no air left in his lungs.  Sudden deep breaths that hurt his throat brought the super soldier fully into the land of the awakened.  "You okay?" Steve heard.  He looked up to find none other than Sam Wilson standing in his doorway with a concerned look on his face.  Steve tried nodding, but his body wouldn't let him lie.

"Just go back to bed," he said defeatedly.  But Sam could read Steve's face like a picture book and it was begging to stay, no matter what Steve said.  Sam found his way under Steve's covers, before he could say a word.  "Thanks Sam," Steve said gratefully, not realizing until that very moment just how much he needed his friend.

"Hey what are friends for?" Sam said, attempting sweetly, yet failing, to brighten Steve's sad eyes.  Before long, Sam fell asleep with an arm haphazardly placed across Steve's chest and his face in the captain's armpit, which was surprisingly comfortable and smelled like lavender.

 

* * *

 

Steve woke up the next morning tangled up in Sam, but still holding feelings from the night before heavy in his heart.  He couldn't help but worry that his nightmare was a premonition, that the one and only James "Bucky" Barnes was lying somewhere, cold, injured, and alone.  He couldn't help but feel that it was his fault, that he should have been able to find him and bring him to a roof over is head and warm hugs by now.  "It's alright Steve, he's probably fine," Sam murmured, his eyes still closed.

"Sam, are you psychic?"  Steve asked his friend very seriously.

Sam laughed and opened his eyes, glad to have helped his friend back into the realm of sarcasm and stupid jokes and maybe even smiles.  "You talk in you sleep, big guy."  An just like that it was gone.  Steve's face was sober again.

"I thought maybe today we could try and get in touch with Fury.  I have a feeling he may know how to find... Bucky."  After all this time, he still found it hard to say the name of his best friend.  It had been so long.  And what if Bucky was gone.  What if he wasn't Bucky anymore?  What would Steve do then?

"Alright, I'll make us breakfast and then we'll get to work.  Sound good?"  Sam asked.  Steve absentmindedly nodded, his mind still captivated with thoughts of the winter soldier.

 

* * *

 

Sam made his way to the kitchen, his mood dropping instantly.  He had no clue what he was doing.  A few weeks ago, Captain freaking America had asked for a little help.  After he had vowed never to get back into fight, this one man had asked him for a favor and he dropped everything.  Sam had never told anyone but every time he jumped into combat, nothing but memories of Riley occupied his mind.  He had lost one friend, he couldn't afford to lose anymore.  Yet here he was, fighting the fight, as if it was what he was always meant to do.

His dead best friend haunted his thoughts as he poured orange juice into a couple of glasses.  Steve was like Riley in a lot of ways.  They were both stubborn and they both ran headfirst into scuffles that question honor, morals, and what was right.  Sam always thought that that was what had gotten Riley killed and that it would end up taking Steve too.

Sam snapped out of his thoughts when he felt something dripping onto his feet.  The orange juice had spilled out of the cup and off of the counter.  "Shit!" he yelled perhaps a little too loudly, dashing for paper towels on the other side of the kitchen.

"What's wrong?" Steve had walked in at the first sound of distress.

"Man, we better find this guy, for both our sakes," he stated plainly.

 

 


	3. moral codes and a home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Natasha is alone and she does not like it.

Natasha was running.  She was running hard.  And her feet hurt like hell because of those goddamn heels.  Because she had to seduce that stupid, perverted, misogynistic pig to get information.  Because Steve goddamn Rogers may or may not have influenced her enough to develop a moral code that stopped her from torturing the asshole and dumping the body in a lake once she got what she wanted.  Life was so much easier when Natasha didn't give a fuck.

That's why she was running from bald, buff, suit and sunglass clad henchman with a pain in her ankle threatening to collapse her foot and get her captured.

Natasha made her way around a corner, then another, and another until she was sure she shook the men tailing her.  Natasha decided she deserved a break and leaned against a grimy alley wall.  She tried to take deep breaths to calm her heart rate, but her tight dress constricted her torso, probably with a hint of bruising.  Life was so much easier when you could call for an extraction 

But this time, Natasha had to take off her heels and walk back to her apartment a good two miles away, wishing she had some cash on her to hail a cab home.  Life off the grid sucked.

After the events of the Triskelion, Natasha needed some time alone.  That's why she was on her own, searching high and far for none other than the Winter Soldier himself.  Natasha had claimed that it would be more efficient to pursue the assassin on multiple fronts, but if she was being honest to herself, the super spy was not ready to face the way actual golden retriever Steve Rogers would look at her after reading all the crap she spilled on the web.

Natasha unlocked the door to her, took off her heels and her bra, and sprawled across the ratty old couch in her living room.  She couldn't bear to see what Steve's face would look like when he realized exactly who and how many she had killed.  He was her best friend.  No, he was her _only_  friend, for fuck's sake.

Clint didn't count.  He was past friend.  Clint had done a shit ton of bad things, too, so he didn't count.  But Steve, she wanted to impress him.  For what reason, she had no idea.  Maybe it's she looked up to him and the way he was so set in doing the right thing that she wanted him to think she was a good person too.

Natasha pushed everything to the back of her mind and tried desperately to sleep, not bothering to move to her bed.  But even her dreams were riddled with details from the Winter Soldier file.  She always had a bad habit of bringing her work home.  Then again she never really had a home.  She thought she had found it in a group of people, an organization.  But it didn't pan out.  Maria was always like a worried older sister, making sure she was alright, packing pain relievers for missions during that week of the month (because Natasha didn't have time to keep track of that shit.  Fury was a father/weird uncle that took her in.  Steve was her brother who had always trusted her, knowing her past.  Clint... well Clint was Clint.  

But it was all gone and it was time to move on.  So in her sleep she pushed back the thoughts, even in her sleep, and willed her body to rejuvenate itself for another day of searching and searching and more searching.


End file.
